


Semi-Sweet

by mylittleredgirl



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: F/F, Friendship/Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21793306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylittleredgirl/pseuds/mylittleredgirl
Summary: “Most people don’t understand the intricacies of choosing the right chocolate for the occasion.”
Relationships: Ro Laren/Deanna Troi
Comments: 7
Kudos: 34
Collections: Star Trek Femslash Prompt Meme





	Semi-Sweet

**Author's Note:**

> in response to a prompt from parcequelle's femslash prompt meme: "Troi/Ro & chocolate"

*

It’s Geordi who tells her, casually, like it’s no big deal: “You know, Ro doesn’t like chocolate.”

“But-” Deanna comes to a stop so suddenly that Geordi takes three more steps down the corridor before he realizes she’s no longer with him. “Really? Not at all?”

“Yeah. She says it doesn’t taste like anything.”

“Doesn’t _taste like_ -?” She feels as though she’s fallen into a dimension with different physical laws.

Geordi smiles. “Is that a problem?” He might be laughing at her.

This is no laughing matter.

*

It’s not that Deanna doesn’t appreciate interspecies differences. She’s more aware of them than most, and not just because she spent a childhood having all her culinary dislikes blamed on her “human tongue.” Since then, she has traveled through much of Federation space and beyond, and while she has certainly spent more evenings in alien banquet halls than in alien boudoirs, she’s made good use of her human tongue in both.

But Ensign Ro is the first Bajoran she’s had the chance to know—well, as much as Ro gives anyone except Guinan the chance to know her. From what she knows of the Bajoran diaspora, those who have fled their occupied homeworld tend to cluster together in groups rather than mix into surrounding societies (which may be why the computer comes up empty on her request for information on the Bajoran palate vis-à-vis Terran desserts). From such a close-knit people, Ro is the only Bajoran among the thousand-plus people on the _Enterprise_. Sometimes her profound loneliness tugs at Deanna’s empathic sense, even as Ro tries to cloak it with decades of anger.

Not that she’d need to be part-Betazoid—or have years of training and experience as a starship counselor—to make that assessment. It’s 1800 hours, Ten-Forward’s friendliest, most boisterous hour, and Ro is sitting conspicuously alone at a table in the dead-center of the room.

“Do you mind if I join you?”

She senses Ro internally recoil, suspicious, and Deanna tries not to take it personally. “I guess,” Ro says.

It’s as warm an invitation as Deanna is likely to get, so she sits.

Ro’s eyes flick between Deanna’s face and the two crystal bowls in her hands. “Are you expecting someone else, Counselor?”

“This is for you.”

“No, thank you,” Ro says. “I don’t like chocolate. You could have asked before replicating it.”

“This is _Delvinian_ chocolate,” she clarifies. “Most people don’t understand the intricacies of choosing the right chocolate for the occasion.”

“What occasion is this?”

“The occasion of you trying Delvinian chocolate.” Deanna gives her most open, encouraging smile and then takes a spoon to her own mousse while she waits.

Ro finally tries it, still watching her with distrust. Deanna catches just a peek of her tongue around the spoon and feels a hit of warmth in her belly, something apart from the mousse. This isn’t about sex, though—this is a humanitarian mission. Introducing the unenlightened to one of the great sensory experiences the galaxy has to offer.

Ro hesitates, then says, “I’m sorry, Counselor. It’s just not for me.”

“Oh.” Deanna tries not to look as deflated as she feels. At least there’s an obvious consolation prize. “Do you mind if I finish it, then?”

A smile threatens at the corner of Ro’s lips. “Was that your plan all along?”

“No, but it would have been a good one.”

*

She could let it alone, but she’s really not a let-it-alone kind of person.

*

She seeks a higher culinary power.

“It was _Delvinian_ chocolate,” she tells Guinan, who should understand, since she introduced Deanna to it in the first place. That first time, she lost about fifteen minutes to pure rapture—they could have sounded a Red Alert and she wouldn’t have noticed until a boarding party of Romulans sat down at her table.

“I see.” Guinan stacks glasses as they talk, readying the bar for the midday shift change. “And it bothers you that she doesn’t enjoy it.”

“She can’t dismiss all chocolate based on a few examples. There are thousands of kinds to choose from, from dozens of planets.” She sighs. “You always seem to know what people will like.”

“Experience,” Guinan says. “Some people are tough to crack. Even if they enjoy something, it may take a while before they come to appreciate that.”

Hmm. “An acquired taste.”

“And some foods aren’t for everyone.”

Which is all well and good, if chocolate were a _food_ instead of a tentpole of Deanna’s spiritual life, and if she weren’t so convinced that there’s more to it than that. All evidence to the contrary, Ro _seems_ like the kind of person who should like chocolate—but Guinan knows her better, so she will grudgingly yield to whatever advice she’s given when she asks: “All right. What would you recommend?”

Guinan considers her for a long moment, enigmatic. It’s not that Deanna can’t sense her at all, but she can’t understand it. She usually feels the emotions of others like an echo of physical sensation in her own body, pain or deception or excitement or love, but Guinan’s psychic space comes through as a field of ever-shifting color her nervous system can’t relate to.

“I think,” Guinan says, “there’s no harm in trying another kind.”

*

Deanna tries six more kinds.

“An assortment,” she says, setting a plate of tiny truffles in the middle of the table. “If you want to try some.”

“Counselor—”

“They’re for the table,” Deanna says, as though they aren’t the only ones sitting there.

Ro is still suspicious. “What’s the occasion this time?”

“A drink with a friend.”

“Since when are we friends?”

There’s something refreshing—almost Betazoid—about someone who says what she’s thinking without worrying about how it’s going to land. “Since now,” Deanna says, and ignores the mistrust from across the table. 

They talk about the latest mission—well, Deanna does most of the talking. She eats most of the chocolates too, but Ro tries a nibble of one without prompting, then leaves the rest of it on a napkin. Deanna makes a mental note.

Ro gets more animated over her second drink, talking about the hairless cats in the Zinfu hall of ministers.

“I thought Commander Data was going to kidnap one of them.”

“ _Cat_ -nap,” Deanna puns.

Ro pauses. “Did I pronounce it wrong?” Deanna senses an old anxiety in her, imagines a younger Ro Laren learning Federation Standard at Starfleet Academy. She wonders if she was even pricklier then, if time and distance from a childhood under Cardassian occupation has softened her defenses, or if a difficult career and time in a Federation prison has wound her even tighter.

“Oh no,” Deanna says in apology, in explanation, “I’ve just spent far too much time with Will Riker for my own good.”

Ro chuckles at that, and her smile—

It’s gone almost as soon as it came, but in those few moments it felt like bright planetary sunshine on Deanna’s face after months aboard ship, and she feels compelled to see it again.

*

She should have known Beverly wouldn’t just hand it over without further information.

“Are you planning a career change?”

Deanna rolls her eyes. “There are lots of reasons a person might want a profile of Bajoran olfactory and gustatory senses.”

“Uh-huh.” She has that stubborn look, the one that says she’s not budging until either the captain orders her to or Deanna spills the gossip.

So Deanna tells her about the humanitarian mission—orphan deprived of chocolate, and so on.

“Hmm.” Now she looks mischievous. “Well, I’ll give you the data you asked for, but it’s not going to make much sense. Of course, if you’d like to let me in on your honorable crusade—”

Deanna snatches the PADD. “I’ve got it, thanks.”

*

So maybe it’s a _little_ about sex.

*

“I want to try Bajoran food,” Deanna tells Ro, because Beverly was right about the raw medical data being absolutely no help. “What do you recommend?”

“There’s, uh.” Ro looks awkward, like Deanna just asked to watch her personal logs. “There’s some in the replicator. I don’t know if you’ll like it.”

As though Deanna hasn’t spent three weeks specifically giving Ro food she doesn’t like at every opportunity. “Try me.”

Betazoids like their sensory pleasures, food among them, so she’s used to strong flavors. She’s grateful for that, for the entrainment of the human tongue that so vexed her mother, because it feels important that she be able to handle Bajoran food, even if she doesn’t like it. Symbolic, even, when so many of their crewmates treat Ro like she’s too much.

She knows about hasperat—it’s one of, if not the only thing most Federation citizens know about Bajoran culture—but has never tried it before. It’s painfully spicy, but still not as hot as she expects—or as hot as it should be, according to Ro.

“It could be the replicator,” Deanna offers. She can’t taste much through the heat, but she appreciates the feeling. She has always enjoyed _too much_.

“Or who programmed it,” Ro says, and she doesn’t say ‘Humans’ but the meaning is understood. Deanna doesn’t know for sure who programmed in that specific recipe, but it’s a good bet. There are seventeen species represented on the _Enterprise_ crew, but the complement is still close to 80% Human—more or less in line with the rest of Starfleet.

Ro offers her spring wine, also replicated, so tart her mouth puckers. Jumja is sickly sweet, too much even for her sweet tooth, but the sappy mess is worth it to have an excuse to extend dinner into a walk in the arboretum, worth it to see the nostalgic smile creep over Ro’s face.

“They condense it, of course, to keep it on the stick, but it tastes almost like this right out of the tree. Kids will just peel the branches and chew on them. The bark is scratchy like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Lots of scraped palms?” Deanna suggests, and it feels precious, Ro sharing a soft piece of her history. Usually, if she mentions Bajor, it comes out like a weapon.

“Skinned knees, twisted ankles, but it’s always sweetest right at the top of the tree.”

Deanna itches to take Ro’s hands in hers, turn them over and look for scars. She doesn’t—this is too new, and Ro’s sympathetic nervous system is too keyed up to accept having her limbs trapped, even gently, even in friendship. Still, when the jumja is finished, she brushes her sap-covered fingers against Ro’s in a way that isn’t entirely an accident, and for a long, laughing minute, they’re stuck together.

*

She doesn’t like heavily flavored chocolate, mostly on principle. It’s like putting paint on a flower—covering up something already wondrous with something that might be nice on its own, but doesn’t belong there.

But for Ro, it seems like a worthwhile avenue to pursue, so she pages through the computer’s library of chocolate-covered spicy peppers. Most of the hottest ones are from Earth, even though few Humans have the taste receptors to appreciate them. She’s known plenty of Humans in her line of work whose first response to something unpleasant is to do it _more_ , so she’s not exactly surprised.

“Try this one,” she says, holding out a replicated version of a 22nd-century ghost pepper, coated with a chocolate layer not nearly thick enough to keep the capsaicin from stinging her hands.

Ro rolls her eyes, but with an indulgent look. This has become a thing they do—Deanna offers her something, Ro tries it and quickly turns it down, but in rejecting the chocolate she’s still giving Deanna her time and attention. Sometimes a meal or an evening together isn’t even Deanna’s idea.

This time, they’re on the holodeck. Deanna hinted she wanted to see her homeworld, see something beautiful from a legendary planet of artists and crafters. She knew little about Bajor, but she’s recently done research, knows the cities were a generational form of art, architecture blended with gardens, curated over centuries and destroyed in decades. So she asked, but she backed off when Ro said, “I don’t really remember it,” meaning she remembered it all too well.

So it’s Ainos III, a Federation outpost on the edge of a vibrantly colored jungle, where Ensign Ro had her first placement out of the Academy. Deanna finds herself full of almost unbearable fondness, as Ro finds brief pockets of happiness in her past to share in exchange for company she’s still a little wary of, food she still doesn’t like.

Ro’s eyes water with the intensity of the taste, and Deanna licks her lips like she can feel the heat from half a meter away. “The pepper’s okay,” she says, a casual downplay of the genuine appreciation Deanna senses. “And maybe the chocolate adds something. I still can’t really tell.”

It’s progress. She’ll take it.

*

They hold hands—on Pakua, on an Away Mission—just while Ro’s helping her cross a shaky footbridge, and for ninety seconds more once her feet are back on solid ground.

It cracks the egg, though, and the next time they’re walking the arboretum at night, Deanna takes her hand and counts ten breaths before Ro finds an excuse to let go.

The excuse is to point out the blooms on the fragile Acacian vine lily they’ve been watching take root, and Deanna considers that maybe it’s not genuine reluctance, but just part of the way Ro unfolds into things. It took her nine weeks, after becoming a permanent member of the _Enterprise_ crew, to unpack her suitcase.

The chocolate she offers that night is dark, mixed with coffee—it’s usually too bitter for Deanna, on its own, but it feels fair that she be a little uncomfortable too, that they both should have to acquire the taste.

*

She comes up with an idea, but she needs help.

“Chocolate-covered jumja. Are you still trying to convert her to the cult of chocolate?”

 _That’s_ a little offensive. Chocolate is at least a full-blown religion. “Geordi, I’m reaching across the cultural divide.” And maybe doing herself a favor as well—she can only hope that adding something to the jumja sap will cut the intense sweetness to a level that won’t give her a headache.

“She likes spending time with you,” Geordi says, “or she wouldn’t do it, but she can’t figure this part out.” 

Ro and Geordi are friends, have been since they didn’t die in a Romulan phase cloak experiment. It’s a little bit grade school, unbefitting of a professional expert in humanoid behavior, but Deanna has to admit that she’s here as much for insight as she is for help with programming a replicator. “I think she has it in her to like it, that’s all.”

“Like _it?”_

He isn’t teasing her, but she can tell from the rising lightness in his mood that he’s thinking about it. She narrows her eyes at him, even knowing there’s no way a facial expression he can’t see will distract from the rising warmth in her face that he _can_.

“I’m far from an expert on women,” Geordi says, “but is it possible you’re going about this the wrong way?”

*

She invites Ro to her quarters for hot chocolate— _real_ chocolate, from their stop at Deep Space Six. Josh at the Veritable Markets shop always keeps some in the back for her when the _Enterprise_ is due in for maintenance. 

Ro still pauses at the door after being welcomed, but it’s less reluctance than the habit of doing a visual sweep of a room before entering. She reminds Deanna of Tasha that way.

Ro indicates the warmer on the coffee table. “You know it’s wasted on me.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, actually,” Deanna says. There are two shallow porcelain cups, but she only pours hot chocolate into one. “I think the problem may be in the delivery mechanism.”

Ro sits next to her on the couch. “You’ve had me drink it before.”

“Hmm.” Deanna takes a long sip. She doesn’t mean to close her eyes, but she can’t help it—after months in space, she forgets how much stronger things can taste when they’re grown under sun and water instead of sequenced from a computer file. It coats her tongue, the inside of her mouth. She may even have moaned, a little.

When she comes back to the outer world, Ro is watching her, and Deanna feels warm, inside and out. With the taste of chocolate still in her mouth, she leans in and kisses her.

She tastes _new_ , through the chocolate, that combination of familiar and alien that comes from kissing someone from another world, and it’s sweet and simple with Ro’s fingers just brushing through her hair.

She can feel Ro’s smile against her lips as they pull apart, that same feeling of clouds parting to clear sky and sunlight that Deanna felt that time in the mess hall when they barely knew each other.

“Delivery mechanism, huh?”

Deanna sits back, takes another sip, and she doesn’t know what feels richer—the drink or the emotions she senses next to her, shifting and rising.

Ro presses her lips together for a moment, trying to contain the grin Deanna can sense anyway. “I think I’m starting to understand the appeal. For you.”

Deanna feels suddenly magnanimous. “I can find a way to accept that you don’t like it.” Not _entirely_ magnanimous. “But I still think you should try it, to be sure.”

Ro pours the smallest amount into the second cup, so little she’ll have a hard time drinking it without licking it out from the inside—not that Deanna minds. She holds the cup out, a Human gesture of toasting the moment. Ro asks, though surely she doesn’t need to: “What’s the occasion this time?”

Deanna smiles.

*


End file.
